Spending time being out of reach. The power button is by far my favorite on my phone.

I have the world’s most expensive PlayStation controller. For the past five years I’ve pretty much only played Rocksmith 2014, and have a few hundred songs downloaded. I’m about to hit 1000 hours played.

On my fourth bass, a brand new Ibenez fretless, and finally have a setup without all the buzzing and crap of a cheap bass.

I like blues, classic rock, but my brain just seems hardwired for 90s grunge as that was my youth.

Greenday, Offspring, Primus (on easy) are my go to. Really enjoy Me and Bobby Mcgee by Joplin and Moonage daydream by Bowie when I’ve been drinking.

Been thinking about taking lessons at a local store, I really want to learn to read tabs and get things setup to play along with YouTube.

I’d love to be able to play some Pink Floyd, Phish, and Grateful Dead. Other than three Dead songs there’s none of that available.

I live in an apartment so it’s all headphones.

My free time is divided between audio books, video games, some TV, mostly YouTube, and learning bass guitar.

I try to skateboard once or twice a week in the summer, and snowboard at least twice a month in the winter.

I have a few motorcycles but those are more cheap transportation these days than a hobby.

The skating, snowboarding, and motorcycles are my “Screaming at the gods”. Dangerous activities that require total focus so everything else in life can be forgotten for a while.

Books and the bass are to keep my mind active and learn new things.

I can’t remember tears of joy, I think I’m just too jaded.

The last thing that brought me happiness was getting to ride a skateboard pump track for the first time this weekend.

Been wanting to try it for years, but there just weren’t any in my area.

Scary and challenging at the limits of my skill, which is just what I had hoped for.

Been a lot of tragedy in my life recently, I’ll take what I can get.

I agree, all my real success has been with technical recruiters.

Temp to perm positions where the head hunter takes a fee until you are either hired on or move to another contract

I could talk for hours on how skateboarding has impacted my life, but Rodney Mullen already did the perfect TED talk on that, and how do you improve on the master?

Seriously, even if you aren’t into skateboarding, watch that one.

I guess two topics I could easily spend a half hour off the cuff on could be “Video conference systems design and best practices for Zoom and Teams call”, or “How to survive a permadeath vegetarian run in Subnatica”.

Then let the audience decide which they’d rather be bored to sleep listening to.

Very similar but on the corporate AV side. Design, program, and manage conference systems. Everything from small 4 person huddle spaces up to auditoriums and divisible multi purpose rooms.

Been doing it since everything was analog, now I’m basically a network engineer.

Going over the stats today we manage over 600 endpoints world wide, not bad for a three man team.

I live by two simple statements, “No one can make me” and “No one can stop me”. I adopted this some time in my early forties.

This applies mostly to social events and activities.

Want to jump on my motorcycle and head off for a weekend? No one can stop me.

Don’t want to attend a wedding or birthday party? No one can make me.

My time is mine, and I’m free to choose that which I do and don’t want to engage in.

Aside from that, as others have said, you really do stop giving a fuck what other people think of you.

This leads, at least in my case, to a smaller, but far higher quality social circle.

Well, my mom died two weeks ago and my girlfriend of eight years left me this week, I suspect once the shock wears off the flood gates will open.

He’s not happy they smiled and waved at the people they signed away their lives to protect.

Was born premature, and required open heart surgery when I was only a few days old.

When I was around 17 I had the chance to visit the hospital and tour the children’s ICU I had been in. A children’s ICU is not the happiest place in the world, and there were strange looks from both staff and parents as we walked around, feeling very awkward.

Then a short man with a thick accent burst through the door and hugged me. Turned out, the doctor who had performed my surgery was there and insisted on showing me around personally.

He walked me over to a woman who was about the saddest person I have ever seen, sitting next to an incubator. “This is what your son will look like in 18 years” he told her.

They took my picture, and hung it on the board for the kids who had “graduated”, and I have to believe it was the first time in a long time that room had joy and happiness in it.

If someone had told me that that doctor wasn’t welcome because he had a husband I think I would have wanted to become violent.

This law means that those families now have 1/3 fewer people to give a chance for thier kids, and the odds for me hadn’t been that great to begin with.